Inside Grandad by Peter Dickinson Read Free Book Online Page A

had to stop to buy the tickets and ask the clerk whether their cat had had kittens yet and had they found the homes for them because she knew some people they might ask, and that lasted till the train came in.
    Then it was back to Katie Wilson and her friend Nan who used to work at Boots only now she worked in the dispensaryat Aberdeen General Hospital, and Gavin started paying attention, though he still had to sift out stuff about Nan's brother Tom who was a champion bagpiper only he'd married this Dutch lassie who couldn't bear the sound of the pipes, and so on. But by the time they reached Aberdeen he'd got all the stuff that mattered. Katie's friend Nan worked the early shift in the dispensary. The man who did the late shift was called Robert, and he lived at Catterline, just down the coast. The changeover time was five o'clock, so he'd be coming past Stonehaven on the bypass a bit after four o'clock. It wouldn't be more than a few minutes out of his way for him to come by the school and pick Gavin up and take him direct to the hospital.
    "Oh, Gran, that's great!" he said. "Thanks so much! That was clever of you."
    "Some use, sometimes, knowing one or two people," she said. "And I daresay you'll do Grandad more good than either me or your ma would. He's forgotten how to listen to me, you know. Trouble is, the more I say the more he doesn't listen, and the more he doesn't listen the more I say, and neither of us can help it somehow. Ah, well, I suppose it's better than quarreling all the time the way some folks do. Remember Betty and Bruce Stickling?… No, of course you wouldn't…."
    The Sticklings lasted her all the way up to the ward and while they were waiting outside because there was stuff going on with one of the other patients. Gavin found he was thinking a bit differently about Gran now. He hadn't got how miserable she was, underneath, but there'd been something inher voice just before she'd started telling him about the Sticklings….
    Quietly he took her hand. She stopped what she was going to say and looked down at him, surprised.
    "I'm sorry, Gran," he whispered.
    "What about, darling?"
    "Grandad not listening to you any more."
    "No need, darling. We've had a very good life together, and I daresay it's my fault as much as it's his. He's a lovely man, I still think."
    "Do you think you could tell Mum what you said—about it being good for him to be alone with me? I think she's still going to take a bit of persuading, you see. She'll say stuff about not knowing Robert, and so on."
    Gran smiled, pursing her lips. Gavin could see her starting to plan her campaign.
    Mum came and fetched them. She said Dad had called, saying he'd be home the weekend after next, while his ship was in port.
    They picked up a pizza on the way home and microwaved it, so supper was almost instant. Gran didn't say anything about Robert, and it wasn't Gavin's turn to wash up, so as soon as he'd cleared his dirties he said he had homework to do. In fact he'd done most of it at Mrs. McCracken's, waiting for Gran, which meant he could go upstairs and start doing the last little bits of touching up on
Selkie's
stand.
    Grandad had made it out of a bit of bookshelf he'd got outof a skip, so there were a few tiny scratches here and there, and a couple of deeper ones. Gavin used a knife blade to squidge in a little ready-mixed filler from a tube, and while he waited for it to dry enough for sanding he thought about how to do the name. He was worried about getting it neat enough, and the same each time—once each side of the bow and again on the stern with the name of the home port, Stonehaven, below. The first thing, he thought, was to experiment on the PC to find letters that looked right. While he was at it he looked to see if there was anything from Donald on Grandad's e-mail. There wasn't, but there were several messages from Grandad's model-making cronies about different things. There was no reason they could have known what had happened to